
Austin-based experimental/avant-garde blues band Churchwood just released their fourth record, Hex City, on November 18th. Known for their eclectic music, which combines blues, voodoo sounds, punk rock, and rockabilly, and the tongue-twisting and multi-lingual lyrics of co-founder and poet Joe Doerr, Churchwood carries their unique signature sound to Hex City to deliver an album that has already been praised as achieving a "prog-like thickness while staying grounded in roots rock" by critic Michael Corcoran of the Austin American Statesman. Glide Magazine premiered the album early and you can listen to it here.
Churchwood released their debut album in 2011. Guitarist and co-founder Bill Anderson was inspired by the Delta blues roots of Robert Johnson, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, and Big Bill Broozy, and played in Austin's seminal bluesy punk pioneer band Poison 13 and Prohibition as well as others. The singer and co-founder Joe Doerr, who got his start in the Austin-based LeRoi Brothers, reminds one of the American beat and French symbolist poets, as well as the murder ballads of Nick Cave and other musicians who pushed the envelope of blues, such as Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. Together the band creates a new musical fusion that blends genres and draws constant critical acclaim, such as "dense and nasty, literate and mean" (Lone Star Music).